202 



DISCIPLINARY POWER OF LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES. 



inent to be present in the House to which he 

 belongs. 



PENAL POWER OF THE HOUSE. The penal 

 power of the House of Commons extends be- 

 yond reprimand or detention; it has the right 

 to exclude from its presence. This right has 

 never been exercised by the House of Lords. 

 It has been questioned by Blackstone, in the 

 first edition of his " Commentaries," but it has 

 been formally established by many precedents. 

 In 1641 Mr* Taylor was expelled, and sen- 

 tenced to perpetual ineligibility. In the same 

 year Mr. Benson was judged to be always unfit 

 and incapable to hold a seat in Parliament, or 

 to be ever after a member of that House. 

 During the Long Parliament elective disquali- 

 fication was frequently made a ground for ex- 

 clusion. At the Restoration in 1 660, the House 

 went so far as to join with a decree of expul- 

 sion against Mr. Wallop the declaration that he 

 should be henceforth incapable of performing 

 any public service or holding any office in the 

 kingdom. When sentence was to be pronounced 

 on a member, he was placed before the " Bar 



Wilkes and assaulted the sheriffs who were 

 charged with the execution of the order, 

 snatched from the flames the unburned sheets 

 of the horrid " North Briton," and bore tbem 

 in triumph to Temple Bar, beyond the limits 

 of the jurisdiction of the city, and there raised 

 a bonfire into which they threw the remnants 

 of the "North Briton," a bundle of boot-tops, 

 and a petticoat, which were favorite emblems 

 of the last and unpopular minister, Lord Bute. 

 Instead of taking compassion on the follies of 

 the crowd, the House got angry. Wilkes, fear- 

 ing its wrath, refused to obey its command to 

 appear in his place in Parliament, fled to Paris, 

 surrounded by a pack of spies and exposed to 

 every sort of misery. He was adjudged guilty 

 of contumacy, and condemned to expulsion 

 from Parliament. These events occurred in 

 1764. On the dissolution of Parliament in 

 1768, Wilkes returned from his exile and 

 offered himself as a candidate for the City of 

 London. He was defeated, but the remem- 

 brance of his misfortunes awakened the sym- 

 pathies of the people in his favor, and he be- 



THE BAB OP THE ENGLISH HOUSE OP COMMONS. 



[At the lower end of the floor, beyond the seats of the members, is a line not to be passed, while the House is sitting, 

 by any person who is not a duly elected representative of the people. A brass rod, which slides to and fro across 

 the open space beside the chair of the Sergeant-at-Arms, can be interposed, upon proper occasions, to exhibit 

 the line of demarkation. This is "the bar of the House," to which persons may be summoned, as to the bar of 

 any other high court or tribunal, if there be cause to bring their conduct or their testimony into question.] 



of the House," and, in early days, upon his 

 knees. But the practice of kneeling has been 

 long abolished. 



CASE OF JOHN "WILKES. The last instance 

 in which this exorbitant claim was exercised 

 by the House of Commons was in the repeated 

 expulsion of John Wilkes during the reign of 

 George III. He was an editor and member of 

 the House. He published a little work con- 

 taining harsh attacks upon the King and his 

 ministers. Forgetful of its privileges, and eager 

 to gratify the royal malice, the House declared 

 the writing of Wilkes to be "a false, scandal- 

 ous, and wicked libel," and ordered its destruc- 

 tion by fire and by the hand of the public exe- 

 cutioner. The Dopulace took up the cause of 



came their idol. Without delay he was elected 

 a member from Middlesex by a strong majority. 

 Many accidents, marked by bloody collisions 

 between the people and the military, followed 

 that election. Wilkes published another arti- 

 cle against the minister, in which he branded 

 as a " hateful murder " the violent repression 

 of the risings of the people. Turning a deaf 

 ear to the urgent reasons set forth with rare 

 eloquence by Messrs. Burke, Pitt, and George 

 Grenville, the House was obstinate in its con- 

 duct, at the time impolitic and hazardous, and 

 declared the second article to be an " insolent, 

 scandalous, and seditious libel," and deliber- 

 ately voted, by a large majority, the repeated 

 expulsion of Wilkes, and to bind for the second 



